Problematic Characters Part 39

Marguerite shrugged her shoulders. "Who will marry me? _Je suis si pauvre et si laide!_"

"What is that?"

"I say: I am poor and I am ugly!"

"I grant the former," said Mr. Timm; "the other is vile slander. You ugly? _Au contraire_: you are pretty, mademoiselle, _tres_ pretty, very _belle_----"

"_Vouz plaisantez, monsieur_."

"No jest," said Mr. Timm. "You are a strikingly handsome girl. In the first place, you have a charming figure----"

"_Trop pet.i.te_," said Marguerite.

"Not a bit," replied Mr. Timm; "secondly, you have prodigiously fine brown eyes, a charming hand, an enchanting little foot----"

"_Mais, monsieur!_"

"Well, what? It is true, and we can say what is true. I bet _monsieur le docteur_ Stein is of my opinion. Do you love the doctor?"

"I him love?" said the little Frenchwoman, with much animation. "I him love? I him 'ate!"

"Come, come!" laughed Mr. Timm; "why should you? He is a fine-looking man."

"_C'est un bel homme, mais c'est un fat_."

"_Un_ what?"

"He is one fool, _oui_, one fool, _qui est monstrueus.e.m.e.nt amoureux de lui-meme; mais avec toute sa fierte je me moque de lui, je me moque de sa fierte, oui, je m'en moque, moi._"

"Pray, don't get excited, and above all speak German, if you wish me to understand you. What harm has the unfortunate man done you?"

"_Lui malheureux? Il n'est pas malheureux, ce monsieur la! Tout le monde le flatte, le cajole_----"

"But for Heaven's sake speak German, I say!"

"Do you believe that he has ever spoken ten words to me since that he is here?"

"That is abominable, to be sure. Ugh! there, I have hurt my foot once more against a miserable root. I am as blind in the dark as a mole. You would really do a work of charity if you would take my arm and help me a little."

"_Tres volontiers, monsieur_."

"Ah, a vain man is this Doctor Stein," said Mr. Timm, holding pretty Marguerite's arm very close and firm, probably because he was so very near-sighted; "well, who would have thought so! Do you know, dear Marguerite--what a pretty name that is: Marguerite!--I may call you Marguerite, may I?--well, as I was going to say: Don't trouble yourself about the foolish man, dear Marguerite! If he does not speak to you, that is his own loss, and if he does not think you pretty, other people think very differently. I, for instance, although I am very near-sighted, especially in this dark avenue, where one can hardly see the hand before one's eyes.--Are you afraid, little Marguerite? No? Why does your heart beat so? Or could you really, by mere chance, be a little fond of me? Are you a little fond of me, dear Marguerite? Don't hesitate; I am an easy kind of man. People say anything to me. Or, rather, say nothing and give me a kiss.--You won't?--Well, that is sensible; you French people, and especially you Frenchwomen, are a charming nation. But why do you cry, little simpleton? Is it high treason with you to give a man a kiss, and that in the dark?--Pshaw!

There comes that fool, the doctor, with his monkey.... _Bon soir_, gentlemen, we can play at hide and seek here."

"Or blindman's buff," said Oswald, "and that without bandages. I suppose we had better go in. If I mistake not, the baroness has been inquiring for mademoiselle."

Mr. and Mrs. Jager had taken leave with many protestations of their respect and their grat.i.tude, in order to return in the one-horse chaise to "their lowly roof" in Fashwitz; Bruno had retired some time before, and Timm and Oswald were walking up the broad staircase which led to their rooms.

"This is your room, I think, Mr. Timm," said Oswald, stopping at one of the many doors which opened upon the pa.s.sage. The latter led, sometimes rising a few steps, sometimes descending, in many windings, through the whole of the older part of the chateau in which Oswald and Mr. Timm were quartered, and in which several of the less elegant guest-chambers were situated.

"And where is your tent, doctor?"

"A few doors further on."

"Are you very sleepy?"

"Not particularly so."

"Well, then, permit me to go with you to your room for a few minutes. I feel the very natural desire to smoke a good cigar in sensible company after all the nonsense which I have heard talked and which I have talked myself."

"Well, come," said Oswald, who would much rather have been alone, but who had too high an idea of the duty of hospitality to refuse so direct a request. "I am doubtful, however, whether my cigars will be good enough and my company sensible enough."

"For Heaven's sake! No more compliments for to-day," cried Mr. Timm. "I have had more than enough, I a.s.sure you. Pray, show me the way----"

"A charming tent," said Mr. Timm, as they entered the room. Oswald lighted the lamp on the table before the sofa and took a box of cigars from his bureau. "A very nice tub for a cynic who occasionally attends lectures with the Sybarites; really famous, too comfortable for my taste. That big arm-chair in the window, from which one can look so cosily on one side into the garden, and on the other, 'still and deeply moved,' upon that beautiful Apollo there; nature and art _vis-a-vis_ and one's self between, as the aeronaut said when he fell from his balloon.--This cigar is superb, genuine Habana, and no stinkador--do you smoke? no? and you keep such a weed for your friends and acquaintances!--Most n.o.ble of men! Saint Crispin is a highwayman in comparison with you! What is that in the very suspicious-looking bottle up there on the book-shelf? I verily believe it is Cognac----"

"And very good old Cognac," said Oswald. "At least my friend Mr.

Wrampe, the steward, says so, who has almost forced me to accept this bottle,--probably smugglers' ware----"

"And never yet opened! _Me Hercule!_ We must really see if the steward has told the truth. Do you ever drink grog?"

"Never! But don't let that keep you," said Oswald, good-naturedly taking down the bottle and drawing the cork. "I'll make you hot water in an instant."

"No indeed! Why such ceremonies? Cold water answers just as well, especially in small quant.i.ties,--this is a charming evening," said Mr.

Timm, rubbing his hands joyfully. "Now please sit down in that corner there, on the sofa, so that I feel you are comfortable, if one who does not smoke and does not drink ever can be comfortable. I will move this big chair up,--what a weight the fellow has! And now let us have a chat, as two good people ought to talk, who laugh at all the absurdity of the so-called great world and good society."

With these words Mr. Timm drew up with his foot another light chair, to rest his legs upon, and then stretched himself out comfortably, bending his head back a little, to be able to look the longer at the smoke of his cigar.

The light of the lamp fell full upon his face, and Oswald now noticed, for the first time, that Mr. Timm's features were really surprisingly handsome and interesting, especially seen in profile, when the bold, clear-cut outlines were fully seen. This discovery was by no means a matter of indifference to Oswald. He went a step farther than Voltaire, thinking that the _genre ennuyeux_ was the worst not only of books, but of men also; and as his sense of the beautiful in forms was very keenly alive, he allowed himself so very largely to be governed by his love for all that was picturesque or statuesque, that his sense for the True and the Good frequently suffered. It was so in this case. Mr. Timm's unceremonious manner and his thinly veiled materialism had offended him more than once in the course of the evening, and he had half and half determined to limit his intercourse with the impudent fellow to the absolutely necessary meetings; but as he now followed with his eye and his mind the outlines of the handsome face, he forgot quickly his resolution.

"Will you please keep still for a few minutes," he said, instinctively seizing his pencil, in order to sketch Albert's profile on the first piece of paper which he found on the table amid books and papers.

"Half an hour, if you wish it," replied the other; "I am perfectly comfortable as I am; only let me smoke, talk, and occasionally take a sip of this earth-born nectar."

"That will not interfere in the least," said Oswald, drawing busily.

"This old castle is after all a strange old box," said Albert, dreamily. "I do not think I have any mind for romance, and yet I have only to put my foot on the winding staircase which leads up this wing, and I feel all the horrors of the middle ages. Even my language changes, and I begin to talk, as you hear, like a novel-writer. What walls! we would make a dozen of them now! If there were people in those days, as I presume, who could storm doors and walls, what thick skulls they must have had!"

"Would you be good enough to take off your spectacles," said Oswald?

"With pleasure. If I had lived in the middle ages I should not have ruined my eyes by reading dusty old books. If the middle ages really had any advantages over ours, it was this, that people were not compelled to learn so much. Just imagine: no schools, no Cornelius Nepos, no history of the middle ages, no examinations, only a few sparring lessons with an old soldier who had served a number of masters and knew how to tell a good story of every one of them, and then if a man wanted to be very highly cultivated, a few lessons on the lute from a strolling minstrel--a merry, boisterous fellow, who was full of pretty songs and gay tricks, who had sung under a thousand windows and kissed a thousand girls,--what a life it must have been! And above all, this facility of changing your residence; this perfect freedom to move about at will, limited at most by a couple of stout fellows, who knocked your brains out in a hollow lane, if they pleased. Georges Sand has said a pretty thing in one of her novels, the only one I remember, probably because it was spoken as from my soul: 'What is there finer than a highroad?' Is not that well said? I could kiss the woman for that sentence, though she is a blue-stocking, and I hate blue-stockings like poison. I won't say like the devil, because he is after all but an unappreciated man of genius, and therefore deserves the sympathy of every educated man. But if a man of our day is pursued by the devil's own knaves, his creditors, where can he flee to? Then in those good old times a man would pack his knapsack some fine morning, or, if he had none, pack himself and march out of the city gate, and after a quarter of an hour, when he was outside the corporation, he was safe, and before evening came he had pa.s.sed through so many adventures already that he had long since forgotten the old city and the pretty nut-brown maid, for whom but yesterday he vowed to live and die. Have you done?

Well, let us see! Hm! You draw like some great painters, the face not as nature has made it, but as nature ought to have made it, if she had not unfortunately been blind at the proper moment. Very pretty, indeed, but I prefer the original. And you are a poet, too, as I see!"

"How so?"

"Well, the other side of this paper, I see, is covered with verses, and above all, sonnets, which I love pa.s.sionately. May I read them?"

"They are not worth reading," said Oswald, visibly embarra.s.sed by Albert's question.--The verses were addressed to Melitta; they had been written in memory of their first meeting in the forest cottage! He thought he had put the papers carefully away in his writing-desk, and now bitterly repented his imprudence, which had placed them now in the hand of his impertinent guest, whom he had every reason to fear was by no means discreet. Fortunately, Melitta's name was not mentioned.